Are you sticking your head in the sand and ignoring the charter schools issue. Because this is not going away unless you help make it go away, and pretending you can’t make a difference is not going to help!

Talk to friends and family, to your local teachers, do some Googling, read the newspapers and blogs, check out what’s being said on Twitter or Facebook. Ask questions – dig deeper. Always ask yourself who is saying what and why – including me, of course – and work out what YOU believe is best. Then act on it.

Unless you really don’t care at all what happens to our education system, please don’t just sit there and let it happen – trust me, this is not a time for burying your head in the sand.

Associate Professor Peter O’Connor Explains Why He is Concerned

Peter O’Connor,from Auckland University, explained on TVNZ’s Breakfastwhy he believes charter schools are the wrong answer to the wrong question and urges people to get informed.

Charter Schools Overseas

Charter schools overseas do not have a good record for inclusion, for equality, for results, or for openness.

In the USA, according to the CREDO report from Stanford University, about 17% of charter school pupils did better than would have been expected in a public schools, and almost 40% did worse – the rest did about the same as they would have done. So twice as many did worse than they would have done. How can that be classed as improvement?

Add to that the hellish stories of children wearing labels saying ‘miscreant’, the filtering out of anyone not deemed to be doing well (in tests), and the untrained staff, and you have yourself a disaster waiting to happen.

I know for sure that I would not work in a school like that and I would not in a million years send my boy to one.

Seriously, this is about the worst thing to hit education in NZ in an age.

Do not just sit by and let it happen – get your head in the air and start asking questions.

What Can We Do?

It’s not too late to lobby against charter schools in New Zealand, to write to your MP, the Education Minister, John Key or even your local newspaper.